News & Announcements

As you can see on our SRC leaderboards, we have fully completed the switch from using the in-game timer to using real time! With this now being completed, we'd like to reiterate some rules and also give all runners a heads up on some things:

- Runs can still be submitted under the old rules until the end of August 31st. Old rules include timing by IGT and emulator borders not being visible. Once September 1st rolls around, RTA submissions and emulator borders will be strictly enforced and will lead to an instant rejection of your run, along with a reason why so you may fix it in future submissions. You can read up the general rule changes here.

- If you noticed an old run of yours is missing, it's because we have rejected all old runs that used IGT/old rules and have kept/updated your most recent PBs. You are more than welcome to resubmit these old runs under the new timing rules, so long as these runs fall within the rules of the category. The mercy rule stated above does not apply to old runs, so make sure you re-time it properly!

- If your current PB is no longer on the leaderboards, we were either unable to find a valid video of your run, did not have enough video content to properly judge the run during re-timing, or a banned emulator was being used. If your run falls under the first two and you have a video you can submit in its stead, be sure to submit it. If you are unsure if the emulator you used is allowed or not, be sure to read up the rules on the game's leaderboard. This also applies to any past runs as well.

Following the recent discovery of RNG manipulation strategies for Gen1/2 main series games, and the unfortunate realization that in the vast majority of cases emulators do not do it accurately, we have come to the following ruling:

Using hard resets during the run to manipulate the RNG on emulators that do so inaccurately is banned. Accurate emulators for RNG manipulation are currently limited to BGB with a GBC bootrom, and for Red/Blue only. RNG manipulation on emulator for Yellow and Gen 2 games is not allowed as it stands.

This ruling is up for review based on future emulator releases, but there is no guarantee that there will ever be an accurate enough emulator released for Yellow and Gen 2.

To clarify, this does not apply to any non main series games as their RNG functions differently.

This is going to be a hectic, exciting, and time-consuming process, so with that in mind I'd like to lay down some FYIs for this transition.

0) To start this process off, I will be adding a rule on each of the leaderboards stating that we are going through with this transition, and that changes will be completed by the end of August.1) The queue on speedrun.com will be quite full for a while, while we work through the re-timing process.2) The leaderboards in general will be in a state of flux until everything is completed. No times will be changed until the entirety of the game has been re-timed, then they will all be edited at once.3) If you would like to submit to the leaderboard during this time, feel free to. It may take a while to get to it, but we will definitely get to it when we can. If you are unsure of the timing method, proceed as normal for the time being and we will adjust accordingly.4) We will have teams prepared, but expect the newer generations to be fixed up before the older generations due to sheer volume of runs.5) Re-timing these runs will most likely lead to some obsoleted times appearing on the leaderboards. We will be removing these runs for simplicity's sake, BUT you are more than welcome to re-time and re-submit your obsoleted run if you want an accurate SRC history.6) If you have a place you're more comfortable starting the timer at (example being Emerald starter manip), you are absolutely welcome to do that, just be sure to re-time your run afterwards to follow the official timing rules (to compensate for the unaccounted time).7) Remember that this process will be completed by the end of this calendar month at the latest. By September 1st, there will be no IGT measured runs, so prepare yourselves for RTA submissions.8) All emulator runs that do not show the entire window starting September 1st will be rejected.

If there are any questions, feel free to ask them. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience during this transition!

The news many of you have been waiting for has arrived. As of this post, all Pokemon runs on leaderboards are to be timed with Real Time. This is obviously a big change as previously glitchless runs have used the In Game Timer, but this will no longer be the case.

Why? Well, a number of reasons have contributed to this change. But recently we've had some open community discussions, and this is the result of them. The large majority of people have wanted this change, and so this is coming into effect in the interest of having fun doing speedruns and people being happy, amongst other things.

All runs currently on the leaderboards will be retimed. We have a team working on this, and it will be done as quickly as humanly possible. All instances where runners blantantly did not care about real time (Best example: Watching credits after Lance in Johto games), will be adjusted accordingly, and have that time removed from their run. This is so no runs are outright penalised for this change.

Now, the rule changes. First and foremost, because of this change Saving and Resetting is now allowed in all runs. This will allow some runners to play safe, and allow some alternate strats even in glitchless runs that were previously not available.

Additionally, all runs for the GBA titles will now also have emulator hidden by default. This is because VBA and all other options are not accurate for real time when it comes to emulating speed. They will still be accepted, like the DS titles, but will be totally hidden from view (and highly discouraged). Like the DS titles, this may change in the future if any actually accurate GBA/DS emulator is made, but this is currently not the case and doesn't seem likely in the near future.

We are also introducing a new rule for -all- runs done on emulator at this point. Every run submitted after this change will have to adhere to this, otherwise it will not be accepted:All runs using emulators must capture the entire screen of the emulator used, including the window border, and the game must be visibly reset before a run. Any use of a savestate or speedup after said reset invalidates the run. Here is an example of what this looks like, showing the entire border of the emulator: http://i.imgur.com/H7Wa1SJ.pngLike the new timing, runs that previously didn't adhere to this specific rule will still be fine, however these Mercy Rules will stop being applied to new runs when this timing change is fully completed, which will be at the end of this month (August)

Timing: This is going to be as unified as it can be while still making sense across the series. For absolute specifics of each generation and game, see the spoiler post below:

Gen 1: R/B/Y:Starting Point: First input on "New Game" Ending Point: First full white frame fading into credits (this matches exact glitched timing, so those runs will not need to change)Mercy rule: Runs that sat on IGT screen before white frame fading will have their time adjusted so it doesn't lose time.

Gen 2: G/S/CStarting Point: First input on "New Game" Ending Point: Clear "..." textbox in overworld after defeating Red (this matches exact glitched timing, so those runs will not need to change)Mercy rule: Runs that watched credits will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time

Gen 3: R/S/E/FR/LGStarting Point: First input on "New Game" Ending Point: First full black frame fading into credits (this does not match current ruleset for Emerald Any%, the runs there will be adjusted)Mercy rule: Runs that waited on naming screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.Mercy Rule: Runs that watched credits in FRLG Round 2 will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time

Gen 4: D/P/Pt:Starting Point: First fully white frame after Soft Reset or game bootupEnding Point: First full black frame after IGT screen in HoF (this matches exact glitched timing, so those runs will not need to change)Mercy rule: Runs that sat on IGT screen will have their time adjusted so it doesn't lose time.

Gen 4: HG/SS same as Any%:Starting Point: First fully white frame after Soft Reset or game bootupEnding Point: First full black frame that leads to game saving after Red disappears from overworld (this matches exact glitched timing, so those runs will not need to change)Mercy rule: Runs that watched credits will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.Exception: Runs that reset at a specific time during the credits (For manipulation further into the run, trash cans); will not have time used on credits deducted.

Gen5: B/W:Starting Point: First fully white frame after Soft Reset or game bootupEnding Point: First full black frame after clearing of N's last textbox before credits ("Farewell")Mercy rule: Runs that waited on New Game screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.

Gen 5: B2/W2:Starting Point: First fully white frame after Soft Reset or game bootupEnding Point: First full black frame after IGT display in HoFMercy rule: Runs that waited on New Game screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.

Gen 6: X/Y:Starting Point: First input on "Begin Game" Ending Point: First full black frame after the fight with AZ ends

Gen 6: OR/ASStarting Point: First input on "Begin Game" Ending Point: First full black frame after the fight with Rival ends after credits

Side Games:Pokemon Colosseum:Starting Point: First input on confirming New GameEnding Point: First full black frame before the credits rollMercy rule: Runs that waited on naming screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.

Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness:Starting Point: First input on confirming New GameEnding Point: First full black frame after last textbox before outro/save (Eldes: "I will look forward to it")Mercy rule: Runs that waited on naming screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.

Pokemon Battle Revolution:Starting Point: First input choosing your save file from new gameEnding Point: First full black frame after final Anna cutscene directly before your IGT is displayedMercy rule: Runs that waited on naming screen will have their time adjusted so that it doesn't lose time.

Pokepark Wii:Starting Point: First input on "Play in Pokepark"Ending Point: First full black frame after clearing of last textbox of Mew before credits; "The power of the friendships you've helped rebuild will hold it together!"

For exact details about how the transition will operate, check the next post. As previously mentioned, it will entirely finish at the end of this month (August 31st), where runs will have to be submitted to these rules.

Every runner has confirmed that their time slot works, so this is a somewhat official schedule. But given that there's still 2 months until the marathon and it's being held online, there's still a decent chance that minor things have to change.

As mentioned in the cuts topic, we'll now be working on other areas of the marathon such as the layouts and hosting schedule. Stay tuned for more updates.

The scheduling team within the PSR Marathon committee has gone over all the submissions the community has made with help from other members when appropriate, and today I'm happy to announce that a list of accepted submissions has been agreed upon.

As was inevitable when attempting to create a 50-60 hour schedule from over 100 hours of submissions, a lot of submissions had to be cut for various reasons. Game choice and category choice were two major factors, but runner choice inevitably played a part as well. It was indicated in the initial submission thread that races would probably not be very prominent in the final accepts, and this has proven to be the case, with only one race scheduled for the time being. Unfortunately, this has meant we had to pick between runners for a few categories with not a whole lot between them to make a judgment on. If you're looking for reasons as to why a particular submission was rejected, feel free to contact a member of the committee.

What's next? On the subject of runs, we will be jumping into attempting to compile a close-to-final schedule straight away. Those of you who have had a run accepted will be contacted regarding your availability for a potential timeslot in the very near future. The contact will be via Discord if you're on the PSR server, and using the other means you provided in your submission if you're not. On other fronts, we will be working on things like layouts, hosting schedules and promotion as we get closer to the marathon, so stay tuned if you're interested in any of those areas.

Now that committee applications have been closed for a while and the committee has been formed, it's time for game submissions to begin. Submissions have been closed as of the end of May 15th.

Some quick points on how submissions worked (pretty similar to last year):

You can submit your choice of anywhere between 1 and 5 categories from any Pokemon speedgame. All 5 categories can be from separate games, or all from the same game, but you only get 5 total. Filling out the form multiple times to put in more than 5 submissions is not allowed. (Clarification: You CAN make another form entry to fill in your empty slots if you entered fewer than 5 runs total on your previous submission(s), but the limit across all submissions is still 5.)

As indicated on the form, do not include setup time in your estimates. Estimates should give a rough idea of how long you think a marathon-strats run is going to take in a bad case, since "worst case" for Pokemon runs could be a very very long time. (Don't worry, we will include setup time in the schedule this year!)

If you think your category could be a potential race, you can indicate as such in the free entry text for "Why should this run be accepted?". The amount of races will probably be minimal due to Pokemon speedrun races just not being very good marathon runs in the committee's opinion, but merely suggesting the idea won't hurt your solo run pitch on its own.

A list of submissions can be found here. As of now, this list is finished and up to date with all public submissions.

Thanks for all your submissions, submissions have now closed.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding the submission process feel free to post a reply in the discussion thread over here, or start a discussion in #marathons in the PSR Discord.

Since the console/emulator leaderboard rule change, record times have also been required to be presented in a single video from start to finish. Today we are announcing a very small exception to this rule:

There is one exception to the above: Any run video which is in exactly two parts due to Twitch activating quality options on the (non-partnered) channel will be allowed. The first part must not have quality options and the second part must have them. The parts must also overlap in terms of video content, which they do as of right now (March 2016) for Twitch quality options transitions. We would still vastly prefer that you locally record your runs and upload the local recordings, but we also realize that quality options transitions are in no way the runners fault nor controllable.

Please note that this rule cannot be used to excuse any run with actual video missing (the two Twitch parts must still show the entire run from start to finish) nor any stream drop that is unrelated to quality options being activated on the channel. As such, you are still heavily encouraged to locally record any serious attempts you do in case of internet trouble.

Due to increased interest by PSR community members in running unofficial categories / ROM hack categories over the last few weeks/months, it has been decided that we will offer a forum to provide a semi-organized home for leaderboards for these speedruns. The forum has now been created, and can be found in the Social section, or by clicking here.

For the time being this forum is just on trial to see just how much it is actually used, and if activity is low it may be removed and/or archived. Do also note that its creation should not make you think in any way that we are going to start adding more categories or ROM hacks to speedrun.com, this is not in our plans at all for the foreseeable future.

This schedule will be updated live as the marathon goes on to reflect any significant changes to scheduling. We look forward to seeing everyone at http://twitch.tv/pokemonspeedrunstv from 7:30pm UTC on Thursday!

Original announcement below here:Sorry for the long wait, everyone, but the draft schedule for our marathon in August is finally out! It will start in the afternoon/evening of the 13th of August and end in the evening of the 16th (in US timezones, anyway).

You can find the schedule here - [removed, use live schedule] . Times on the schedule are in UTC, which is 1 hour behind the time in England right now and 4 hours ahead of the Eastern US. The final schedule will be published on a site like Horaro with automatic timezone adjustments, so no need to worry about converting everything now.

What comes next? Well, we will be looking out for people to take hosting shifts soon. This is a role where you remote access the streaming machine and setup the stream for each new run as well as sitting in our Mumble/Teamspeak to announce the runs and their runners as they come. All you need for this is to have a reliable internet connection with passable download (upload doesn't really matter), be confident at speaking on stream (should be most of you), and know your way around OBS or XSplit (again, shouldn't exclude many people on here). More details on that in the very near future.

We will also be contacting runners again soon regarding stuff like audio setup, so keep an eye on your designated contact method if you have had a run accepted.

(Note: If you've been following the marathon planning up to this point, you may notice that this schedule doesn't really include any setup time despite the committee having said not to include that in your estimates. That's a mistake that is fully on us, but we only realized as such after having already confirmed all the times with the runners. Because a lot of the estimates are fairly inflated for worst-case Pokemon RNG and our setup should be fairly conducive to starting runs quickly after the previous run finishes, we've decided to just run with it and hope it works out. If it doesn't and the marathon is running late enough to make it so that runners won't be available for their run any more, then there are a couple of runs by committee members that we can move or cut altogether to get things back on track. If, on the other hand, things go really well and we are ahead of schedule, there is a short run or two we'd like to try to include during the dead time at the end of any of the more inflated estimates.)

After forming a marathon committee of Gymfreak739, Javi137, RXFadez, werster, Darcovian, Sinstar, Roush and myself at the beginning of this week, we’ve been able to come to some decisions regarding the format of the marathon which have allowed us to open up runner submissions to the marathon as of today.

Submissions are now closed. Thank you for all of your submissions!

The marathon will take place over the weekend of 15-16 August. Do note that this does not represent the exact start and end dates. The marathon will almost certainly last somewhere in the 48-72 hour range depending on submissions, so we’re looking to start on Thursday or Friday and finish on Sunday, while the date quoted is just the Saturday and Sunday for the weekend of the marathon.

You can find a reference list of submissions to date by clicking here. Do note that this is manually updated to only show useful information and filter out trolls, so your submission may not appear on it for up to 48 hours. If it takes any longer than that, feel free to contact one of us on the forums or Twitch to inquire into what’s going on. Decisions regarding which submissions make it into the marathon won’t be published until after the deadline has passed, so don’t take your presence on this list as any kind of guarantee that your submissions will make it.

Actual submissions should all be done using the form, but if you have any questions or feedback regarding the submission process feel free to post a reply in the discussion thread over here.

With the relatively new Speedrunslive announcement you can find here and recent discussion with the community on the forums, Skype, etc., the leaderboards will now be moved to speedrun.com . However, the community has agreed that the current PSR Wiki and Forums should continue to be used for their current purposes of storing resources and facilitating discussion, so only the leaderboards will be moved.

This change comes with certain advantages:

A centralized leaderboard - As more and more communities are moving to Speedrun.com, this will help the community get more recognition.

User profiles - Each user will have a customizable profile that shows all their times on one succinct page.

Run verification - All submissions will be reviewed by a moderator that has experience with each game. This is mainly for “soft-checking” rather than full proof analysis.

Aesthetic layout - A variety of filters to help target your specific needs.

Time - Since we are trying this run verification format out, it will take a bit more time for your run to show than it would for a Wiki edit. However, this will hopefully make the leaderboards less susceptible to potential trolling. Once everything has settled down and game-specific moderators are in place, there should be fast response times on every new run added and multiple points of contact available in case your run is taking an unexpectedly long time to be verified.

Still new - There are still updates being made after the big SRL announcement, so we ask for your patience as we try to accommodate for all your needs (Pac, the owner, is also very open to suggestions which is awesome). One thing that you might notice is that right now all the posted times include seconds (set to 00) despite most of our in-game timers only including hours and minutes. This will be fixed in a later update.

More importantly, what this means for you is the following:

You will not need to move any of the times you have already submitted; Pac, has already made a script to transfer all your times.

For all future runs, please submit your run directly to speedrun.com. It is relatively simple to navigate through the game list, but please let us know if you have any difficulties. Also, make sure to make an account on speedrun.com so that all your runs are linked to you.

Finally, we are looking for game-specific mods at this time. If you are interested, please check the forum discussion here. As a warning, please only apply if you are going to put in the time to constantly check in on the leaderboards to verify runs, update the page when necessary, etc. This is not to just get recognition or a title.

If you have any other concerns or suggestions related to this move that aren’t about becoming a moderator, post over in this thread.

Thank you for reading this long post, and hopefully this announcement brings you good news!

So there hasn’t been a lot of visible action from the admins lately, but we’ve been discussing issues and working to improve the site in the meantime. This post will give some insight as to what’s coming up regarding site improvements, as well as addressing the recent console/emulator legitimacy issue.

Records

Whilst there have been good arguments on both sides, it seems like the overall community direction in the console/emu debate (as accepted by our staff here) is that for a run to be considered "world record" it should be played on an official platform. With this said, the rules for a run to appear on the "records" page will be changed to read as follows:

For a run to count as a record it must:

Follow all the rules of the category it is being submitted under (obviously)

Be played on an official [Nintendo] console which is allowed for the category in question (this only bans SGB1 for its higher framerate than other GB/GBC platforms)

Be presented in a single video from start to finish. This is a restriction put in place to help reduce doubt over runs in multiple video segments having 'splice' points. Yes, we realise that internet connections are not 100% reliable and your stream will picnic from time to time, but you can easily set up local recording that does not cut out when your stream cuts to overcome this.

New leaderboard system

The current leaderboards on the wiki are fairly easy to use and they get the job done, but we think we can do better. In a couple of weeks, a new leaderboard system will be launching on the PokemonSpeedruns site which will be similar to existing systems found on other speedrun community websites, but tailored to this community's specific needs and integrated with the rest of the site. Some new features for this site will include:

Forums account integration (no separate signup required)

Tracking all submitted times from each user, not just their latest PBs

Filters to see only console runs, or console+emulator as appropriate

The long-promised tracking of less serious (Challenge%) categories, in a more informal setting than the other 'official' leaderboards

Checking of new runs added to weed out obvious trolls and the like (this won't constitute full verification, at least not to begin with, but it should suffice to stop the people who don't even try)

Automatically generated records page based on the best console runs submitted to the site (so there's less subjectivity in who updates the "WRs" page)

As you may have noticed, we have added some layout changes to the site, and we will clarify these changes here:

1. Pokemon Speedruns category renamed to Community.2. PSR Home added under Community category.3. General Pokemon Speedrunning has been combined with the General Pokemon forum under the Social category.4. Events forum added under Community category. Races and Marathon threads have been moved to the Events forum. Thus, the Events category has been been removed.5. Randomizers subforum renamed to Randomizers and Rom Hacks and moved under the General Pokemon forum.6. Contributions category created. Feedback and Suggestions forum moved to Contributions category.7. Two forums, Projects and Policy, have been added under the Contributions category.8. Several other threads have been shifted around under the Contributions category, such as the Japanese thread and Challenge%, so be sure to check the new home for these threads.

In addition to these changes, the Admin team are looking into a more effective layout for the Main Series and Spinoffs categories. We will post a new thread providing some options, but we will need your help to decide what is the most effective layout. Stay tuned for this in the next couple weeks.

We appreciate any feedback on these layout changes. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, but hopefully these changes will be for the best in the future.